


Mockingbird

by SegaBarrett



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: Canon Compliant - Mainly, Gen, References to Domestic Violence, References to Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 23:04:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4198413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene during "Check-Out".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mockingbird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dm21](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dm21/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Bates Motel, and I make no money from this.

It hasn’t quite hit her until now just how delicate her older son is. She’d pushed him away as long as she could remember, pushing him to be the independent one, the strong one.

She isn’t sure he’ll ever understand that it’s not because she loves him less, but because she loves him differently. After all, objectively speaking (if she could speak objectively about something this close to the nerve) the trauma of Dylan’s conception hadn’t been that far off from the whirlwind of disaster that was Norman’s birth – if she can ever get them both to fall in line, if she ever has another baby, that would be a modern miracle. When Dylan was born, John had hung on her every concern, not understanding them completely – brushing them off as his teenage girlfriend freaking out about having her first kid. To be expected. 

With Norman, she’d assured herself from the time she saw the blip on the ultrasound that he would be perfect in every way. He would be her companion in this house in a way she already knew Sam wouldn’t be. Hell, he hadn’t been able to stop yelling at her long enough for her to get to the hospital. She’d called him out of work, he claimed, but she smelled alcohol on his breath.

John had held her hand and told her everything would be all right, that people did this every day. 

She’d been too exhausted to fawn over her newborn once she assured herself he didn’t have extra limbs or horns or a tail.

It’s only now, looking down on him as he sleeps, that she realizes she’d love him even if he had those things. That Dylan’s had to prove himself in a way Norman never has.  
And ultimately, that the features she’d tagged as Caleb’s are much more indicative of her – the blue eyes, the fiery temper, the insistence on doing the right thing, stubbornly, wanting to understand everything.

“Dylan,” she clasps her hand over his. She’ll need to clean him up a bit. Maybe turn him on his side in case some motel business decides to intrude. But no, she’s been leaving Dylan alone too much. This one time, he needs her. 

He slowly opens his eyes and groans, rolling over on his own steam.

“Where am I?” he mumbles.

“In a room at the motel, honey,” she whispers in response. “You passed out. How do you feel?”

Dylan shakes his head from side to side and tries to sit up, but fails. 

“How long…?” he asks.

“A while. Emma found you,” she says, and she tries to make the words without judgment. Of course he’s mad at her, of course he’s furious at her, but what did he expect? When would he pick for her to tell him that particular bit of information? If she’d had her way, she would have kept on as it was, squinting her eyes and thinking to herself that in the right light he had John Massett’s hair, his eyes, and some of that obnoxious swagger that made her fall for him.

And sometimes, of course, he does. Nature versus nurture, she supposes. If people are around each other long enough, they start to look alike.

“I gotta get out of here.” Dylan swings his legs over the bed on a few attempts and, taking a whiff of himself, adds, “Gonna go take a damn shower.”

“No, you’re not. Sit right back down there. I’ll clean you up.” She grabs at a few napkins on the desk – must have been Emma’s doing – and starts to paw at him. It had always been  
Norman she’d pulled back to adjust his shirt collar, always been Norman who she’d leaned into, picking off lint and making sure he didn’t have anything in his teeth.

She can’t entirely blame herself. Dylan always seemed to have it together, and every extra second spent on him was another second with Sam breathing down her neck asking why he bothered taking care of her and some other guy’s kid.

Oh, if he’d only known – if he’d only suspected.

As by the end, she was pretty sure that John had. She wasn’t sure John remembered his one brief meeting of Caleb – dropping Norma off at her house as Caleb was sneaking out the window to get drunk – but if he did, then the truth was pretty much out in the open.

Not that she was going to tell it.

Instead, she met Sam Bates.

Sam had seemed normal; in fact, he’d seemed better than normal. He’d been charming and sweet and everything that John had been but wasn’t anymore.  
It had seemed so perfect up until she actually had a ring on her finger. 

“Dylan,” she whispers again. He’s so vulnerable, so quiet. She can feel despair wafting off of him. She can smell alcohol, smell where he’d thrown up. She gets up, runs into the bathroom and grabs a roll of toilet paper, comes back with it. “Oh Dylan,” she says softly. She dabs at his lips, at his cheeks and chin, and thinks of the first time they’d put him in her arms. She had expected to feel some kind of overwhelming love at the time but what’d she felt had been drowning, like she was in so far over her head and couldn’t even swim.

But she’d counted ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes. Wasn’t that what every parent wanted?

Norma wraps her hand around Dylan’s now and counts ten perfect fingers, reaches down and pulls off his shoes and socks, counts ten perfect toes, swollen and cut up and calloused. 

She closes her eyes and remembers the times Sam would scream at Dylan, at tiny defenseless Dylan, and the times she’d stopped defending him because that only made it worse in the end. The days she just let Dylan stay with John because then it was easier.

And John had loved him, probably still did. 

If Caleb had known… 

But she can’t allow herself to think on that, can’t stop to wonder what it would have been like if she’d opened her mouth and breathed the words, told the truth. It would have only made things so much worse.

Telling Dylan before today would have made things so much worse.

“Dylan.” She leans down and presses a kiss to his cheek. “I love you.” 

She knows that it’s true. She’ll never love him the way she loves Norman, not with that all-consuming, nearly painful rush, the times when she thinks of nothing else but him for days on end, the thought that being apart would kill them both. But she loves him just the same. 

“Stay,” she tells him, brushing a piece of blonde hair out of his face. “Please stay.”

“I can’t.” 

“Try. Lay back. Get some rest. I’ll be here, okay.” 

She reaches down, picks up his feet and moves them back into the bed, drapes a blanket over him, and repeats the word so low she’s not even sure she actually said it: “Try.”


End file.
